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W. C. Heinz, 93, Writing Craftsman, Dies

W. C. Heinz, the sports columnist, war correspondent, magazine writer and novelist who was considered one of the finest journalistic stylists of his era, died Wednesday in Bennington, Vt. He was 93.

His death, at an assisted-living facility, was announced by his daughter, Gayl Heinz.

From the 1940s to the 1960s, Mr. Heinz was among America’s foremost sports journalists, but his writing ranged beyond the sporting world. His contemporaries included Red Smith, A. J. Liebling, John Lardner, Grantland Rice and Jimmy Cannon. A colleague at The New York Sun, Frank Graham, was quoted in a Sports Illustrated profile of Mr. Heinz as having said, “At his best, he’s better than any of us.”

Mr. Heinz placed his personal stamp on his descriptive writing, foreshadowing a changing style in journalism.

In “The Morning They Shot the Spies,” his 1949 article in True magazine describing the firing-squad execution of three Germans who had infiltrated American lines in World War II, Mr. Heinz recalled how the war correspondents were given a final chance to depart rather than witness the executions.

But he stayed, and he remembered the scene as it would have been viewed by the three Germans who were about to be shot.

He wrote: “I looked at the ground, frost-white, the grass tufts frozen, the soil hard and uneven. I wondered if it is better to die on a warm, bright day among friends, or on a day when even the weather is your enemy. I turned around and looked down into the valley. The mist still hung in the valley, but it was starting to take on a brassy tint from the sun beginning to work through it. I could make out three white farm buildings on the valley floor, a little yellowed now from the weak sunlight, and I could envision this, in the spring a pleasant valley. This view I see now, I said to myself, will be the last thing their eyes will ever see.”

In the foreword to “American Mirror” (1982), a collection of Mr. Heinz’s articles, Red Smith wrote how “every time I read ‘The Morning They Shot the Spies,’ I feel the cold and the fear.”

David Halberstam, in the foreward to “What a Time It Was” (2001), a collection of Mr. Heinz’s sports articles, wrote that along with Red Smith, “he was a leader in what was about to become a journalistic revolution.” He continued, “He wrote simply and well — if anything, he underwrote — but he gave his readers a feel and a sense of what was happening at a game or at the fights, and a rare glimpse into the personalities of the signature athletes of the age.”

Wilfred Charles Heinz, known to colleagues as Bill, was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont. He was hired by The Sun in the late 1930s, worked as a city desk reporter before becoming a war correspondent, then wrote a column, “The Sport Scene.”

When The Sun went out of business in 1950, Mr. Heinz concentrated on magazine work.

In a 1951 article in True magazine titled “Brownsville Bum,” he told how a dirty fighter from Brooklyn named Al Davis, better known as Bummy, had died a hero, trying to foil a holdup.

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“The night Bummy fought Fritzie Zivic in the Garden and Zivic started giving him the business and Bummy hit Zivic low maybe thirty times and kicked the referee, they wanted to hang him for it,” Mr. Heinz wrote. “The night those four guys came into Dudy’s bar and tried the same thing, only with rods, Bummy went nuts again. He flattened the first one and then they shot him, and everybody read about it, and how Bummy fought guns with only his left hook and died lying in the rain in front of the place, they all said that was really something and you sure had to give him credit at that.”

Mr. Heinz collaborated with Green Bay Packers Coach Vince Lombardi on “Run to Daylight!” (1963) and revisited sports figures he had written about in “Once They Heard the Cheers” (1979).

His novels reflected his interest in the craftsmanship of his subjects.

“The Professional” (1958) told of a boxer’s preparation for a fight. “The Surgeon” (1963) was based on the work of a thoracic specialist. Mr. Heinz collaborated with a physician from Maine, H. Richard Hornberger, who had been struggling to write of his experiences in the Korean War. Their novel, written under the pseudonym Richard Hooker, was “M*A*S*H” (1968).

In addition to his daughter, of Amesbury, Mass., Mr. Heinz is survived by a granddaughter, Kristina Heinz Pantalone. His wife, Elizabeth, died in 2002.

Mr. Heinz provided insight into his creative process when he was profiled by Sports Illustrated in September 2000.

“It’s like building a stone wall without mortar,” he said. “You place the words one at a time, fit them, take them apart and refit them until they’re balanced and solid.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: W. C. Heinz, 93, Writing Craftsman, Dies. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe